- From: Nir Dagan <nir@nirdagan.com>
- Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 04:49:13 GMT
- To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Excuse me for bringing this topic again. In my view authoring guidelines should suggest that: 1. The language of ALL the text in a document should be marked. 2. This is priority 1. In most documents it means that the author uses the lang attribute in the HTML element. (and/or sets a certain HTTP header) The rationale for this is that a speaking or Braille browser *must* know the language of a document in order to render it correctly. (or to warn the user that it can't render the document, and ask the user's advice) Currently, the guidelines talk about language changes, and about foreign languages. This would have made sense if HTML had a default human language, and all other languages are defined as foreign, or if the W3C was wrting recommendations for mono-lingual intranets. How can a speaking or Braille browser know the document's major language? by guesssing? "Foriegn language" is author dependent. I write in all my documents <HTML lang="en"> because English is a foreign language, but if I were a native speaker of English then I may have omitted the lang attribute? Why the user/browser cares what is a foreign language to the author? Regards, Nir Dagan, Ph.D. http://www.nirdagan.com mailto:nir@nirdagan.com "There is nothing quite so practical as a good theory." -- A. Einstein
Received on Monday, 16 November 1998 14:48:00 UTC